


Loyalties

by virginianwolfsnake



Category: Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 02:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9578843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginianwolfsnake/pseuds/virginianwolfsnake
Summary: A young kit mediates between her brothers and Olaf - and forgets to be embarrassed about adoring the latter.





	

“Your brother is an idiot,” Olaf announces dramatically, far too loudly for the setting, flopping heavily into an armchair. From behind the bookshelf, someone hisses _shh_ , and he whirls around, apparently affronted that anyone in a _library_ could possibly be offended by loud, unnecessary noises.

Kit sighs. Such an opening to their conversations no longer comes as a surprise. Lemony laments every other evening that she seemingly doesn’t have any standards, and Jacques provides her with reams of evidence of Olaf’s bad behaviour at weekly intervals, as if she doesn’t already know of it. And Olaf…well, she supposes he’s the worst. Isn’t he always? 

She fixes him with a patient look from beneath the rim of her glasses, like a teacher resolving a playground dispute between three badly behaved five-year-olds.

“Which one?” she asks in a whisper, hoping that he’ll take the hint and lower his tone to match.

He considers the question, with a sneaky smile quirking the left corner of his mouth more heavily than the right. 

“Well, I meant Lemony,” he says, still not lowering his voice. She cringes, just a little, because she knows he’s annoying every other occupant of the library, including the two volunteers working on that new code, and she knows that they’ll glare at the two of them when they leave together. He won’t notice, of course, or care if he does. “But now that you mention it, _both_ , obviously. On and on about the monologue in Act Two, as if they’re such experts. Alberto is speaking to the audience, not the other characters – what’s the point of _that_ if he’s just going to lie about his motivations? It wouldn’t make any _sense_.”

She doesn’t need to know the background. Lemony can never let anything slide, just like the way he always picked at scabs as a child. A fussy, superior, bitingly sarcastic critic versus an arrogant, superior, bitingly sarcastic playwright – whoever could have guessed that it wouldn’t be a match made in heaven?

Of course, none of it is about the play anyway. _It’s because they know you aren’t good enough for me_ , she’d told him once, and he’d laughed raucously and kissed her, spluttering the word _ridiculous_ in a way that didn’t entirely match the warmth in his bright eyes.

“To be fair,” Kit comments, as evenly as ever. “Characters have desires which motivate their actions, but it wouldn’t make very interesting viewing if they were upfront about what they were, would it?”

She imagines that Lemony put the criticism in slightly stronger words, but that the message was likely the same. Of course, though, she’s _her_ , so Olaf smiles rather than snarls. 

“Wouldn’t it?” 

Kit shrugs one shoulder carefully, and lowers her eyes back to her book under the pretense of reading it. 

“I’m not the writer,” she says placidly. 

“You might remind your brothers that, in fact, neither are they.”

“I can see what they meant, that’s all. That just isn’t how real people behave.”

She forces herself not to look at him, but she can feel him rolling his eyes even from metres away.

“You and your _real people_ ,” he mocks gently. He hauls himself to his feet again, with a number of dramatic sighs, drifting over to stand behind her. “Don’t you ever get bored of being so suspicious?”

Someone hisses _shh_ again, more insistently, but he isn’t interested. He places one hand on her shoulder and traces a line from the base of her neck to the shell of her ear with the other. When she doesn’t respond, determined to at least finish the sentence he interrupted so rudely in the middle of, he unclasps the clip holding her hair in its messy bun, allowing it to spill freely to the tops of her shoulders, the bits of her overgrown fringe falling irritatingly in front of her eyes.

She sighs again, and begins the process of noting the page and trying to remember the paragraph for later reference, because clearly he isn’t going to allow her to finish – and she’s never liked folding over the pages. But even that moment of hesitation is too long. There’s nothing he hates more than being ignored.

He bends down to press a kiss against her cheek through the hair he’s messed up, and then promptly plucks off her glasses before she can even notice his arm hovering beside her head.

“Come on,” he says into her ear, in that low, mischievous grumble that she can’t help but adore. “Enough books for today. I’ve got a better idea.”

She wants to feel impatient with him. He’s such a child that she wants to shrug him off and carry on with her book, wants to be as unaffected as she thinks she should be, but she can feel her lips itching to turn up into a smile. With his lips still hovering against her skin, she knows he can feel the twitch of her cheek as she resists.

Kit admits defeat and closes the book. Tolstoy, it seems, will have to wait.

She turns her head ever so slightly towards him, only the tiniest fraction – but it’s enough to let him know that he’s won this round. He swoops in immediately for a kiss that makes her forget all about the grumpy noise-conscious volunteers behind the bookcase.

When he pulls back, she realizes she’s grinning.

“What is it this time?” she asks.

With a flourish, he produces from his coat pocket a mysterious photograph of a group of a dozen men in identical diving suits, helmets in hand, all frowning grimly into the camera.

“I’ll explain while you drive,” he suggests, dropping the keys into one of her hands and grasping the other to pull her to her feet. In his attempt at whirlwind romance, he pulls her up too harshly and she stumbles forwards, accidentally clacking the toe of one shoe against the heavy wooden shelf at floor-level.

 _Shh_ , the voice insists again, louder than ever. Once he’s draped an arm around her waist, Olaf barks _shut up_ at full volume on their way to the door – and, just like every time before, she forgets that she was meant to feel embarrassed and laughs out loud instead.


End file.
